McCreevy is not the answer to our recession

IT seems the well of denial about the causes of the recession in Ireland runs deep if your columnist Matt Cooper (December 12) thinks Charlie McCreevy has anything to offer.

Let’s be perfectly clear, the seeds of this recession began in 1997 when a government led by Bertie Ahern replaced a perfectly good government led by John Bruton — a government which to our cost was not in office long enough to have tackled the corruption of the political process by Fianna Fáil since 1987.

Our economy from 1997 onward was jerry-built and, like any such structure, sooner or later the whole thing falls apart.

It is abundantly clear that the present Irish economic model includes inbuilt structural weaknesses designed to widen inequality (thank you, Mary Harney) at the expense of the less-well-off in society — the reasoning being that those people never vote or fight back.

McCreevy did nothing to stop this and has done precious little as EU commissioner to give the people who actually create the wealth of the EU economies a fair share of it.

McCreevy, like his party, has nothing at all left to offer Irish politics and it is a pity Matt Cooper should be so intellectually lazy as to try mislead people into thinking that one of the people responsible for causing this economic mess can have any solutions on offer.

He doesn’t.

The only way to solve this mess is by a complete change of government.

Desmond FitzGerald

Grosvenor Court

Wharf Lane

London